What is it that makes life worth living when the temporal aspects of life are taken care of? That is the realm of culture and the spirit. It has to do with the development of our minds, our moral growth, and our sense of belonging to a community. “The empires of the future are the [...]
Seeing the works of the early decades of the twentieth century by Robert Hugh Benson and Hilaire Belloc as part of a living tradition of historical scholarship, we might hope that the revival of interest in their historical perspectives might prove inspirational to new generations of pioneering cultural figures in the twenty-first century. The reception [...]
A Victorian cleric named Joseph Leycester Lyne dreamed of establishing an Anglican monastery at Llanthony, Wales. Lyne took the name of Father Ignatius and has gone down in history as one of the most eccentric and and energetic of all Anglo-Catholic pretenders. Ignatius of Llanthony During the first years of my quarter of [...]
What do we know of Catherine of Aragon, the first to suffer the pains of the so-called Reformation? All Catholics know the Salve Regina, the “Hail, Holy Queen,” the Marian antiphon sung in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven, who is without doubt and without question the most sung of all the [...]
What is history if not a “survey,” and what are historians if not chain-bearers? Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself History records that in 1763 two guys surveyed a demarcation line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as bits of Delaware and West Virginia. The surveyors were Charles Mason [...]
The Constitution consummated the work commenced by the Declaration of Independence—a work in which the people of the North American Union had achieved the most transcendent act of power that social man in his mortal condition can perform. John Quincy Adams, at the time a former President of the United States and member of the [...]
Starting just 30 years after the Crucifixion, Catholic England produced remarkable figures, including lesser-known luminaries like Bishop Robert Grosseteste, who pioneered the scientific method. In my book Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England, I sought to present a panoramic overview of two thousand years of English history, from the first century to the [...]
The question of the purpose of peace has troubled humanity from the time an ancient hand was first raised in anger. It is one thing to win a war and impose peace on a vanquished enemy, and altogether another thing to cultivate one’s own victorious city or nation once the wolf has been held at [...]
Why did the introduction of the new liturgy not bring about the long-anticipated renewal for which we were all longing? Without the deep personal relationship with Christ that develops and grows in personal prayer, the liturgy can soon become ineffective, not in itself, but in those who are not prepared to receive it. Many of [...]
Great literature does not pass away, nor does it lose its relevance, because, like the wise virgins of Scripture, it remains loyal to the Bridegroom and the unchanging truth that He teaches and the unchanging truth that He is. Like the saints, the Great Books are alive. Gertrud von le Fort's "The Wedding of Magdeburg" [...]
We are so accustomed to regarding the fine arts as simply a means to pursue or attain the beautiful in the abstract, that we forget that for long centuries there was a close connection between the arts and some public purpose. Outside of academia, discussions about theories of art or the relations of art and [...]
Booker T. Washington did not call for a revolution. Instead, he called for the simplest of building blocks in American society: helping your neighbor. I reread an undergraduate paper comparing the educational methods of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois and realized the comparison was horribly incomplete. I cited only Of the Training of Black [...]
Once Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570, there was a target on all Catholics, especially priests. The Catholic gentry of England put everything on the line to give shelter to the priests, particularly by the construction of hiding places in their large country houses. Here is the story of my trip to some [...]
Quietism in all its different manifestations seemed to encourage the reformer’s belief that our own efforts are useless and even blasphemous. Its adherents were not only encouraged to do absolutely nothing in prayer, but to do nothing about temptations either, that could only be overcome with God’s grace. Miguel de Molinos Molinos, the [...]